


dyed yellow, (died) yellow

by wrenkos



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Headcanon, Pre-Canon, Pre-Game Personalities (New Dangan Ronpa V3), Spoilers, pregame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-09 17:30:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15272637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wrenkos/pseuds/wrenkos
Summary: It’ll just be a side-hobby, the viewings. A sort of escape. It’ll be up there with painting, maybe she’ll pick up the piano after the last two failed attempts when she was younger.It’ll just be a side-hobby, she repeats to herself. Nothing major. She won’t dedicate her existence to it or anything.She tells herself this.(In the end, she’ll give her life to it.)





	dyed yellow, (died) yellow

**Author's Note:**

> ndrv3 spoilers. tw for canon-typical violence, and one scene of an anxiety attack and unreality.

Her name is █████ ██████ and she knows the sun and the stars, she knows laughter and joy, she knows how to live her life freely and without holding back.

She is surrounded by love and adoration; loved by neighbors and loved by all. Her parents are there for her, she has friends, she has everything and more than she could wish for. Her world is dyed in color, of red, of green, of blue, of yellow, of all the colors that are in the world, of all the colors that aren’t, and specks of grays and blacks show their faces so soon to never, that they may as well cease to exist.

She lives with her parents in a small apartment, but that’s fine, because she has all the color she needs with them. An only child, she smiles and laughs with them always. Her mother paints, and sometimes she paints too, and her parents hang her “works” on the wall. Her works, of fingerprints and paint splatters and with little to no use of a brush of her world, a world that was once a blank, white, empty canvas before she existed, now turned to different vibrant hues.

The “painting” is one of childhood innocence, one that only a child ― untouched by a world that damns all creativity of one’s brain ― really, could paint.

The world is blue and red and orange and yellow, and then ―

The world is friendly and filled with love, and then ―

The world is hers, and then ―

― And then it isn’t.

She has happiness, and then she doesn’t.  

She is too young to understand why she must move, too young to understand everything and why she must go to live now in a place far away from home. She is too young to understand her family circumstances and why everyone is trying to tell her that it’ll be alright.

She doesn’t understand why she has to leave, because she doesn’t want to.

* * *

She finds that the small apartment that she lived in was dipped in color, but the rest of the world is not.

* * *

 █████ ██████ is different in this new world devoid of life and color.

She wants to go back.

She wants to go back.

But something about her dad’s work, or something about better job opportunities, or something or something or something or something. _Something_ won’t let her go home.

And mama and papa keep telling her that this is her home now.

* * *

She is different. Maybe it’s the way she pronounces things, because this is the language that mom only sometimes spoke at home. She doesn’t know why she can’t speak the other one. It doesn’t make sense, but it’s what people tell her to do. Maybe it’s because her skin is different, maybe it’s because of her hair color, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe.

She doesn’t want to listen, but somewhere down the line she realizes that this is what she has to do.

* * *

She is different, she is different, and she wants to go back. Like a broken, useless, good-for-nothing record, the statement repeats and repeats and repeats forever and ever and ever and ever. Not a day passes in her small mind where she thinks that she wants to go “home”. Home, to color, and not to the small apartment she sleeps in now.

She doesn’t like how her name is so different to the others, she doesn’t like how people give her strange looks sometimes.

She doesn’t know.

She’s miserable, and she knows why, but she sees no way to get out of it.

* * *

The people at school are nice. She doesn’t want to talk anymore but they talk to her sometimes, usually for a forced group project that she doesn’t really want to do. Call it her rebellious phase, call it her emo phase, call it whatever or whatever or whatever, she still hasn’t adapted to her current environment, and is surprisingly stubborn. As her parents found out.

But maybe, maybe, maybe maybe maybe maybe there’s a chance she’s warming up to this new place. It’s not that she ever asked to be here, after all, but she thinks that, with all the dull colors she can paint it colorful herself.

(Looking back on it, she had the right idea, but not the right actions to go with it.)

* * *

Her friends now aren’t the friends she had when she was but a girl. Now she is in highschool and the curriculum is harder than ever, and so are the judgemental looks. It’s not that she gets bullied, or anything, she just feels out of place.

(What’s new?)

She grins and bears it anyways. A smiling child, that’s who she is, after all.

The old friends that she sometimes only maybe talks to have changed. They, too, have had all the color ripped from them. All they talk about now is boys and they don’t seem to care for how she feels, or about anybody besides their own selves, it seems.

On the flip side, there are some friends who bury themselves in their studies. This time, she doesn’t want them to care about her, but she cares about them and feels herself being pushed away.

It seems there has been a disconnection.

The loss of childhood innocence. It seems that is what has happened to all of them.

* * *

The friends she knows now, she only has a few she would really call “friends”. It’s not like they’re any better, just they’re of a physical form compared to the people she used to know, compared to the people that she hasn’t seen in person for who knows how long. She knows she could find out the exact amount of years, and, if she wanted to, the exact number of months and days and if she really wanted to apply one of the stupid math questions she got in her textbook, the exact number of minutes and seconds. Maybe more. She didn’t want to even think about the smaller units of counting.

She just wants to go back.

She shakes her head; clears her thoughts. Even if she could go back, then the world would just be still colorless, right? The colorful days are over. Were over?

...Whatever. It doesn’t matter.

* * *

Her name is █████ ██████, and she thinks that school is hell and she hates it. The few friends that she have all agree with her that there are too much. Such is the life of a private school student.

It’s studying, more studying, student council meetings, more studyings, and perhaps an episode or two of television if she sneaks it in. Not that there’s much to watch, nowadays, people seem to like gore and grim. She isn’t looking for a long list of what she should watch, so she doesn’t ask. She considers dabbling in other subjects ― the arts, in particular, stand out ― but she has barely enough time and likely not enough personal savings and doesn’t want to ask her parents and the list goes on on and on.

She _could_ ask her parents, but she doesn't want to bother. The world is hell, and she wants to be free again. How poetic. Maybe she should take up poetry and creative writing.

She lies awake, well aware of the looming unit test that her classmates are cramming for (and likely crying as well) that will come in the next two days. She understands the unit. It’s fine. It’s fine.

It’s not like her mind is anywhere near thinking about the topic of the test.

But there’s something about...well, everything of the past that makes her want to go back, that pulls her from her studies to mull over it.

She rolls to the other side of the bed ― plain, white sheets. Boring. Dull. Black and white, yet again, like her life is ruled by it. How fitting that it is even present in where she sleeps. She sighs, and checks her phone ― 2:38, it reads. In the am. Lovely. Lovely!

She drops her phone to the ground and hears it clatter. She immediately regrets that decision at the sound of that. These walls are thin.

She stays in that position for a while, not daring to move, before she feels like too short or maybe too long of an eternity has passed and rolls to the other side and stares at the ceiling yet again.

“Ugh,” she mumbles, squeezing her eyes shut and pulling her covers over her head.

The world is so boring.

(Herself included.)

* * *

The thing about being a quiet student in school is that you get to listen into drama. Not that there is enough school drama to hear about, but, whatever. She knows there’s a sale on some sort of merch that’s making some people in her class go absolutely wild. Some say they’ve brought casual clothing to put on so they can make a mad dash to the stores, like people who have been deprived of it for years. It’s an amusing sight to an outsider.

She doesn’t understand, because when she googles the name ― Danganronpa, or maybe it was Dragon donpa, she doesn’t care either way ― she finds lots of pink and a lot of demonic-looking teddy bears.

She thought it would be some sort of idol thing, with the way they were gushing about it, but she supposes not.

* * *

...Regardless, she finds herself in the mall. She has free time, thanks to the cancellation of club activities this week. The president got sick. She wished she got to stay home, but maybe she doesn’t, because all she does at home is study anyways, but you can’t do that when you’re sick (well, technically you could, but you’d hate yourself even more all the while.)

“██████ -san?” comes a familiar voice, and she looks up. Ah. That’s the class representative. “Are you here for the merch, too?”

“...No,” that’s a lie. Her feet carried her here, maybe out of curiosity, maybe out of boredom, maybe out of whatever thing she could say instead of the words ‘just because’. “I don’t watch it.”

The class rep gasps, “You haven’t?? How are you alive??”

She doesn’t remember the class rep being this...passionate, but whatever. “Yeah. I’m...I’m here for something else.”

“...Oh…”

“Sorry,” she says. Her voice is quiet, as usual. Because she’s quiet █████ ██████, who doesn’t exactly like the world but is living it in anyways. “...Well...be seeing you, then.”

She walks off.

* * *

She finds herself in the arts and crafts section of the store. Most of the crowd, she notes, are in the aisle down the corridor. She assumes it’s for Dang on Ron Pal. Dangit Ronpi. She doesn’t know anymore, it’s something she’ll forget in due time, anyways.

It doesn’t matter in the long run.

(She’s wrong, but she doesn’t know that yet.)

She finds herself staring at an acrylic paint set. The colors are...vibrant, alive, dancing and dancing and just begging to be bought.

She checks her wallet.

The comparison is laughable. She wants to kick the (paint) bucket.

(Hilarious.)

She keeps walking down the aisle. Walking into stores and not buying anything when you’re sure people you know are going to see you is...well. They probably won’t care, but it’ll probably add to the list of things that keep her awake at night, won’t it.

She sighs, rubbing her eyes and chewing her lip. She doesn’t even know what she’s here for. Just to wander. She should have chose the park and not a shopping mall, of all things. The music is muted but too loud at the same time and she just wants to curl up to a little ball, but she doesn’t understand why this of all things is irritating her to this much and she shouldn’t be reacting like this, right?

Right. Right.

Right, she shouldn’t, because she’s █████ ██████, the foreign student, the transfer student, who keeps to herself, gets good grades, and doesn’t fit in in general.

But she shouldn’t be complaining, right? Others could have it worse. Others are dying out there! She has access to a high education, she has a happy family, her parents don’t argue every day. She doesn’t understand

She’s lonely, but what big of a deal is that? She wants to just curl up in a ball and disappear sometimes, but what big of a deal is that? Why is this all coming together to form a giant rock, or maybe a giant sword, or whatever or whatever, who really cares, that’s going to fall onto her head, or maybe her neck, or maybe her everything and crack it open and make her a mess? Why now, of all times, is she feeling overwhelmed?

Maybe it’s the lights. She thought they were too bright.

Maybe it’s the sale. She thought that there were too many people here.

Or maybe it’s everything, it’s everything and everything because, in this moment, this oh-so-perfect moment of her existence, in a mall, in an empty aisle, in a public setting, her brain has decided that the sound of other people making noises around her is the tipping point of the iceberg.

She stops counting the dots and lines on the floor and blinks and blinks and blinks, like she can bat away all her insecurities with the blink of an eye!

She chews her lip, takes in a deep breath, counts to three.

And smiles.

(Shoving all her problems down her throat.)

It’s an empty smile, a fake one, a forced one, the kind of smile you smile when you’re lying, but that’s not right, because nobody knows she’s lying, right? So that isn’t right. No, it’s the type of smile that makes her want to lie down and die, but it’s the type of smile people would look at and think, “yeah, that’s normal”.

Not like anyone would know it was fake. None of them know her well enough.

Bottling it up has always been her solution. Shove it all down into a little box and sit on the lid and hope when she opens it what resides in that box won’t flood out and drown her in all her emotions and feelings and the problems she complains about without turning to face them. Until the box begins to crack and the edges begin to fade and everything comes spilling out like paint, the colors of the deepest darkest reds and her insecurities, until they spill onto her in a shopping mall, of all places.

And then it’ll be a vicious cycle, of her shoving it down into a smaller box that will break sooner but it’ll buy her time and she’ll keep going and going because she doesn’t know what else to do because when she was younger she didn’t have her box of insecurities in the first place.

Like a mask, she wears the smile, and the thoughts are swirling in her head and she has no idea why this is happening, but apparently, it is. Unless this is a dream. But this feels quite real, doesn’t it?

Her eyes dart around. Something. Something. Something to calm her down. Something to take her mind off of this. She wants to be home and crying in her room because that’s usually when it hits, not in public.

There’s a watercolor pack on the middle shelf, and she thinks, yeah, whatever. It’s in her price range, and she can fit it into her bag. She just wants to get out of here and doesn’t want to give her brain another excuse to judge her, right? Because she doesn’t want to come all this way just to return home empty-handed, right? Of course. Right.

She takes the pack and takes a second too quickly to step out of the aisle. She pays and she leaves and she thanks the cashier with a fake smile, but they don’t say anything, because nothing is wrong to the outside world, just a girl with a slight accent who wants to buy a watercolor set.

Because she’s black and white, dull with shades of gray, like the rest of the world. Nothing out of the ordinary besides her looks, but her smile is perfectly in place so nobody will suspect a thing.

* * *

She shuts her bedroom door when she gets home. She just wants to sleep and forget about her homework and hope she has a substitute teacher for all her classes so she doesn’t have to complete it.

She throws herself on her bed.

Looks like her mind is black and white, too. Devoid of life, too.

God, how she wants to be positive and bright, dyed bright bright bright colors, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen anytime soon with the world this bleak.

Her mind wanders to the watercolor set, and the thought of “maybe I should open that” or “maybe I should work with that” or even “maybe I should throw that out” runs through her head, but she pushes all of that away and pushes her face into her pillow instead.

_Drawing and stuff is good for stress, right?_

But she doesn’t have the energy or motivation to get up from her bed.

She closes her eyes instead.

Black is the color of her dreams as well, it seems.

* * *

She wakes, gets dressed, and goes to school. She hasn’t done her homework. Usually her teachers don’t check, she’ll just have to cross her fingers and look occupied. She can flip to notes. It’s fine.

It’s fine.

* * *

The day passes, and the weekend comes. It’s her time away, her time to herself, away from her studying and away from everything. The lazy mornings, dripping into afternoons. It’s those blissful moments that she absolutely lives for ― the four, five, six seconds that she wakes and doesn’t remember everything that she hates in life. And then it hits her, and the whole world is black and white again, and perhaps darker and more dead and dull every time she realizes it once again.

She rolls out of bed. Besides the unit test she has decided she’s going to wing, there is surprisingly little homework. That’s new. Maybe she _will_ study after all.

Still, all the more time to...do something. Do anything. Take her mind off of things. She has time to take it slow.

* * *

█████ ██████ doesn’t think it should be this intimidating to have opened a watercolor set. She doesn’t know. When she was younger, she would crack open the case and dump water all over it, probably drink the watercolor water and use paintbrushes in ways that would make an artist cry.

Now, she stares at it. Maybe she’s scared.

She picks up the paintbrush. She has no idea what she’s going to draw.

* * *

Her name is █████ ██████, and her favorite color is yellow. The first painting ― well, besides the painting attempts, but those now sit at the bottom of her trash can ― she completes is one of a sunset with a bright yellow sun.

...It feels wrong. Maybe it’s the way she’s holding the brush.

She doesn’t know, but it’s probably the disconnection from her past to present self. This wasn’t as glorious as she thought it was going to be, really.

She shakes her head. Enough painting for today.

* * *

An hour passes, and she is bored. Usually she would study, even if she wasn’t in the mood, and stuff formula after formular into her head. She doesn’t feel like doing that.

She leans back in bed, her laptop open on her lap.

Maybe she should give Danganronpa or whatever it was a try.

* * *

She learns that there are 52 seasons, the current one just having started to air. That’s a lot of episodes, and she isn’t in the mood to watch every single season. It’s baffling to her that this has been dragged on for that long, really. She doesn’t know.

She rubs her neck and opens up a number randomizer. 48, it gives her. She goes to look for her earbuds ― might as well see what everyone is talking about. If it’s gone on for so long, has to be at least half-decent, right? Or else there would be no reason for it to go on.

* * *

What is this.

What...what is this.

She stares, mouth agape, at the body of a high school student, one she can’t remember the name of even though it was said so many times, who has a knife embedded into his throat.

Vibrant colors. This world, the one of Danganronpa, is not black and white.

It is vibrant, with too much pink.

She cannot take her eyes off of it. It’s morbid. It makes her feel sick in her stomach. She doesn’t understand why this has 52 seasons and counting.

Why was this even allowed? Why did people watch this? What ― what the _fuck_ was this? Her classmates watched it? The class representative, who seemed nice and cheerful and the top of the class ― hell, maybe the top of the _grade ―_  watched _this?_ Things of blood and guts and gore, and if she was gathering this correctly _more_ things of guts and gore and the disgusting shade of pink by the end of the season? By the end of the seasons, even?

This was entertainment to them? This was entertainment to everyone rushing to the merch in the shopping mall?

This?

_This?_

Of people barely above her age?

She shakes her head, shutting her laptop quickly. They’re zooming in on his face, on his lifeless, dull eyes, full of terror and tears.

...Ah, she never liked these kind of things. She hated being scared, but would always put a brave face.

She didn’t understand it.

* * *

She can’t stop thinking about it.

_She can’t stop thinking about it._

It’s disgusting, it’s inhuman, and yet…

And yet.

And yet, she thinks she understands why this is such a popular show. It’s not for the right reason.

* * *

█████ ██████ watches the entirety of the 48th season in one sitting.

* * *

She doesn’t know how to feel about it.

Most certainly, she is not going to be running around town preaching Danganronpa and yelling of how “Danganronpa is life” or whatever their fanbase does. She’s not going to cosplay, she’s not going to draw fanart, she’s not going to shove it into the faces of everybody she knows.

It’ll just be a side-hobby, the viewings. A sort of escape. It’ll be up there with painting, maybe she’ll pick up the piano after the last two failed attempts when she was younger.

It’ll just be a side-hobby, she repeats to herself. Nothing major. She won’t dedicate her existence to it or anything.

She tells herself this.

(In the end, she’ll give her life to it.)

It’s disgusting, it’s gory, and yet, she’s drawn to it. Like a moth to an open candle flame, she flies to it and burns, burns, burns. While the candle burns itself, too, as if the wax is make from these so-called Ultimate students.

* * *

She rubs her eyes. She forgot the shut the curtains last night and now sunlight floods the room. It’s too bright, she thinks, and goes to close it.

She rubs her eyes again, yawning. Her eyes flick to the laptop sitting on her lap ― ah, did she fall asleep with it on? ― and the paused screen of whatever episode she was on last night. The finale, or something.

She plugs it in, putting it on her desk and going to eat breakfast. No way she can watch that on an empty stomach.

* * *

She finishes the 49th season. Binging shows was always a problem for her, which is why she didn’t bother watching in the first place (to the best of her ability.) She turns it off and puts it on her to-do list, at the very very bottom, in tiny text like somebody will judge her if they see it.

(It’ll be quite the opposite if anybody saw it, anyways.)

* * *

Life carries on. She doesn’t watch past the 49th season and soon it’s an afterthought. To her, it feels almost as if it had it’s spotlight so long ago. She wants to watch an episode but time drags her away from doing so and her self-control kicks in when she has the thought at 4 am to watch it.

Maybe later, she thinks. Maybe tomorrow.

And after tomorrow it’s another “maybe tomorrow” and after that tomorrow it’s another “maybe later” and when later comes and goes it’s stuck in a cycle of pushing the dates further and further and further.

The students next to her whisper excitedly and say that the finale for the 52nd season is next week. Something about this “Rantaro Amami” guy makes them squeal, apparently.

On social media she sees bits and pieces of it ― something, something, Junko Enoshima (wasn’t she in the 48th and 49th seasons, too?). The names “Rantaro Amami” and “Tsumugi Shirogane” appear quite frequently. Maybe they’re the main characters, the dubbed “protagonist” and “helper”. She hasn’t watched the 52nd season, she wouldn’t know.

The subway train rattles to a stop as she sways back and forth, standing next to too many people at once, and stares at her phone. People online seem generally excited about it. Sales, apparently, like that time before, have gone up and up and up.

She rubs her neck, noting that this stop is the one that she gets off at already.

* * *

The thing about Danganronpa is that, now that she knows what to look for, she spots the merchandise quite frequently. T-shirt patterns, figurines, and now that she knows who Junko Enoshima is, she notes that the girl at the back of the class has her on the front page of her notebook.

Hm.

She feels a little weird, being out of the loop for so long and now having at least her foot inside it. But she supposes it’s always been that way for her. With her viewings of the 48th and 49th seasons she’s...maybe “hip with the kids” now? She doesn’t know.

She never cared about fitting in ― she never did in the first place ― but maybe...with this she could?

She shakes her head, leaning back in her chair. What are these thoughts? When did she always want to fit in. Usually she didn’t care ― and she should focus on her history homework for now.

* * *

The next week comes and goes. There’s a long weekend this week, like Danganronpa knew exactly when to air for the most people off jobs and work and school.

She skips the 50th and 51st and jumps to the 52nd season.

The finale is tomorrow.

* * *

Her name is █████ ██████, and she cries at the end of it.

Amami and Shirogane both volunteer to receive punishment for their friends to live on, and, before they can both comprehend what the other is saying the mastermind ― the calligrapher, prim and proper but laughing their head off ― claps and says, what a delight for a double punishment! And shuts the curtain shut on both of them, before they can both go back on their words, claws extend from behind Monokuma and their screams are both heard as they’re thrown to the execution room.

And then the remaining two survivors vote for the mastermind to die. Unfortunately, the mastermind is her favorite character. They have a complete and utterly merciless death.

* * *

And the world is back to “normal” for her. Well, as normal as it can get, at least. But the show must go on! Or whatever the statement is for Danganronpa, because there’s apparently auditions for the show, according to their website.

...She didn’t even know there were auditions, honestly.

She sighs. Not like they would look at her. Nobody looks at her. She’s fine being a viewer.

Right. Right. Right. She’s fine being a viewer.

(She isn’t, really.)

Even so, she keeps the thought buried at the back of her mind.

* * *

Another test comes and goes.

She keeps up to date with the news on the next season.

* * *

It rains today. She knows the train will be too crowded, more so than usual, and decides to walk. The rain pit-pats against her yellow umbrella, and she looks at the ground to keep one foot in front of the other.

She always liked rain. It was like she could wash all her insecurities away. Become one with the earth, or...something. Become a child again and splash in the puddles, not caring if she got even a single droplet on another person.

Apparently the first day to get the information paper for the auditions was today. (She learned this because the people next to her seemed to be a very reliable news outlet for anything Danganronpa related.)

She avoids stepping in puddles, but after a while she thinks that her shoes can’t get that wet anyways and steps into them (at least, the shallow ones) without a care in the world. It’s not like her shoes are white, or anything. They’re black ― hard to stain. Her feet feel weird but at the moment she does not care.

Her walk home will take a while longer ― probably 15, 14 more minutes, depending on how fast she wants to walk and what route she takes.

She sighs, waiting for the light to turn to the pedestrian symbol so she is able to cross the road without, of course, being hit by a car and dying.

A flutter of paper hits the ground, and she turns to see people walking in the opposite direction. It doesn’t look like they saw the paper drop.

Miraculously, she finds that the paper ― some sort of pamphlet? ― isn’t wet when she goes to pick it up with the intention of returning it.

“...Excuse me, miss?”

The people keep walking. They can’t hear her.

“E...Excuse me, m―”

Her voice dies in her throat when she sees what is written on the pamphlet.  

It’s for Danganronpa.

The auditions. The 53rd season. .

The pitter-patter of the rain drowns out any other sounds as she stares at the retreating figure of a girl with blonde hair in a dark school uniform, the outermost pocket of her bag opened just enough for the paper to fall to █████’s feet. It seems the sound drowns out her ability to speak as well ― she opens her mouth but the words don’t come out.

She hears the people around her begin to move. She stays standing still, staring at the girl. That girl lost her pamphlet, now in her very own hands. That girl is going to have to go to another place to find another one of these, she thinks.

Thief. Thief. Thief. Thief.

She stares at her hands, holding the paper. It’s so light, but it feels so heavy.

Why does it matter so much? She doesn’t want to audition, right? She isn’t going to, so why isn’t she moving? Why won’t her feet move? Why won’t her voice work?

Is this okay?

Is it alright for her to have this? To ― to steal this, like a criminal? Is it a crime? Does this even count as theft in the first place? Will she run into that girl again, and if she does, will she remember her, and vice versa? Does the girl know?

The people around her start to move, and she feels like the world, too, is moving at a faster rate and swirls around her feet. You can cross the road now, she thinks.

█████ shoves the pamphlet into her bag and hurries off without another word. Her world is spinning; her steps are shaky.

* * *

She thinks about auditioning. The paper reads in two weeks the auditions will take place. Pitch in your ideas, and the lucky 16…

She chews her lip.

She has always been an outsider. If she dies, then who would care?

█████ ██████ is alone, now, in this world of black and white. The only color that remains is the splash of vibrant Danganronpa pink.

She’s lonely, and bored, and wants to go back to a time when things were easier. A killing game would give her something to do, wouldn’t it? And surely give her enough money to do anything she wanted, right?

* * *

 She cannot sleep that night, either. Her head is full of thoughts, thoughts that she doesn’t know if they’re hers or not.

* * *

She wakes the next morning, her head still full of thoughts. She barely had a single blink of sleep, and, when she did, she dreamed of her world dipped the color of “blood” and the glory of winning.

She shakes her head in attempt to clear it and quickly walks out.

* * *

She opens her bag for class and realizes that the paper holding the information of the auditions is still in it.

Her notebook is taken out quickly and her bag is zipped shut.

* * *

One week passes. There is one week left to the audition date. It is burned into her mind and it helps her stay awake when she does not want to.

She chews her lip. Does she, does she not. Does she, does she not.

* * *

Dinner that night is fried rice. She picks at every single individual grain with her chopsticks, her nerves refusing to settle. Everything doesn’t feel exactly real, and her mind keeps thinking of what-if what-if what-if, and what she would be if she really did make it in.

“█████-chan? Is something the matter?”

She snaps her head up at the words of her mother, and nervously laughs, shoving a mouthful of rice into her mouth in a very unladylike manner. Oh, god, she’s even nervous. She hasn’t said a word about the auditions, and hasn’t said anything to her parents regarding the show. Would she have to get parental consent to be in Danganronpa?

Her dad raises an eyebrow at her behaviour, but he lets it pass.

For a few moments that feel like forever and more, they all sit in silence as █████ eats her food. It’s an awkward silence, a tense one that she feels like will break into a fight if she mentions anything Danganronpa related. Was it always this way, or is being nervous amplifying everything? After all, it’s not that she even knows her parents opinions on Danganronpa, of course, but she assumed somewhere along the way that they don’t know about it.

“You know,” her dad leans back in his chair ever so slightly, clearing his throat and she freezes, thinking _he knows he knows he knows, I’ll die at my father’s hand before I die at the hands of an Ultimate or none at all,_ “You should be thinking about getting a job and what you want to do with your life. All you ever do is be on that computer of yours nowadays.”

She tenses. A job. Is being on Danganronpa a job? Probably. You become a millionaire, or maybe more rich than that if you win. Somewhere in her head she registers her mother protest on her behalf ― ‘She gets good grades, she can be accepted into any school she wants to with those!’ ― and her brain is a fumbling mess yet again.

“...A-Actually,” she manages to say, not daring to look at her parents eyes and instead staring at the table, taking a deep, nervous breath ― was she always this nervous? ― and continuing, “I’ve been thinking about that too. There are auditions for a job…”

“Auditions? Don’t you mean an interview?”

“...Yeah, that works?” She laughs nervously, flicking her eyes up but darting them back down in a matter of seconds.

“So you have been thinking about it!” her dad breaks into a grin, “That’s good. What’s it for?”

“...A…” a killing game on live television? “It's for T.V.”

“T.V?” her mom echoes, “As in... a commercial?”

“Mhmm,” she lies with a nod, “like that.”

“Well. It’s good to see you’re thinking about it. Your summer is free, unless you want to do more studying...but a job sometime then is a good idea. It’s good that you’re thinking about getting one yourself instead of bothering us, huh?”

“Yeah,” she lies again, “yeah.”

Just the summer.

(The killing game wouldn’t take just the summer.)

* * *

A week passes by quickly, too quickly, and it’s like a blur. She doesn’t know if this will be the last time she sees her classmates or not.

But then again ― did they ever care for her in the first place?

No, █████ figures, they didn’t. She was just another classmate.

She stares at the homework in front of her, and thinks, that if she wins, then it’ll be enough to never see another math textbook in her life.

* * *

She figures that going to the auditions, at least, she’ll do. She figures that there are hundreds ― no, likely thousands more people that audition alongside her. If she doesn’t make it, she’ll forget it and never attempt again.

Just the first audition. Just the first one. And if she doesn’t make it, she doesn’t make it.

“I have the interview,” she says, and she’s a little too quick, a little too urgent, to get out the door, “Bye!”

“Do you need me to drive you?” her father calls, and she shakes her head,

“No, it’s fine! I’m going on the subway!”

* * *

She sits in the subway cart, and she thinks, it can’t go fast enough but it can’t go slow enough and she grips the bag that has the audition paper in it like it’s her lifeline.

(Maybe it is.)

She looks around her and thinks, that there are so many people here. How many of them are going to the auditions? How many people does Danganronpa attract? How many people will go tomorrow, in an hour, in two?

She doesn’t know. Her mind is a whirl and so is everything.

Four or five stops until her destination, a teenage boy about her age gets on. He sits next to her, face in a nervous smile with his eyes obscured slightly with a baseball cap.

She’s nervous, oh-so nervous, that she doesn’t even realize that the boy pulls out a phone with a Danganronpa case, a Danganronpa strap attached to it, and has a Danganronpa background on it, even. Of course, she doesn’t realize it, and pulls out the audition paper once more to check the location again just in case she maybe forgot it or got onto the wrong line.

The boy next to her blinks.

“Hey,” he says, “You’re going to the auditions too?”

“......um,” she turns ― ah. Now that she notices it, he has the audition paper in his hands, too. “Yeah.”

“That’s great!” He grins wide, “I’m going to get in for sure. I know everything about this series! I have my whole script, and I know what I’m going for, and they’ll let me in for sure.”

“That’s...great,” she finds herself repeating, her stomach full of butterflies that she wants to throw up. “I’m a little nervous.”

“This is the stop!” He says excitedly, jumping to his feet, and leaves her in the dust as he practically sprints out for the Danganronpa headquarters.

* * *

Number 418. The number burns into her skull and it stares up at her from the paper she received. What number are they on? 112, already? The speakers are so loud.

She sits on the ground, next to the vending machines, staring off into space. It’ll probably take a couple hours or so. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know. It’ll take a long, long, time.

From her position on the ground, she sees faces, all unfamiliar, save for the people who dressed up as several different characters. There are people talking about Danganronpa, people fighting over Danganronpa in the corner, and there’s so much Danganronpa here it’s almost suffocating.

Somewhere along the line, where time passes and she eats the lunch that she packed in case this happened, she spots the girl she took the audition paper from ― black uniform, blonde hair.

She looks immediately down at her feet, then stares at the sandwich she brought. She can't look at that girl, not at all.

The next time she looks up she doesn’t see the girl again.

Of course, she thinks. It’s not like anyone here can sit still.

* * *

They’re on number 364 now, and her sandwich is long gone. How long has it been? She doesn’t know. Everything feels like too long and too little at the same time now, as if they both could apply to the same thing.

A boy with long hair, hair longer than hers who wears a black surgical mask clears his throat when she is lost staring off into space, bringing her back to reality.

“Excuse me,” he says, and she looks up ― quite up. He is quite tall ― in response, “Is there anybody sitting here?”

“No,” she manages to say, and looks back at her feet.

The two sit in silence for a while, and he is on his phone. His phone case (surprisingly) does not have any signs of Danganronpa merch. Maybe he knew that she wasn’t the biggest fan in the world here.

Number 387 rolls around, and he gets up suddenly. “Well,” he says, voice low and quiet and she strains to hear it above the crowd of teenage Danganronpa fans, “My number is soon. Your ability to keep quiet and not add to all this sound was very much appreciated.”

“...Thanks?”

He bows slightly, turning on his heel, “Good luck to us both.”

And then he walks off, and she sighs, pulling her knees closer to her chest. Weird guy. Were all Danganronpa fans that weird?

She sighs, chewing on her lip. If her stomach is full of butterflies, her head must be full of dragonflies and moths.

* * *

Number 412 rolls around and she hurries off, a sense of urgency in her step.

* * *

The auditions start. She’s greeted by a woman who looks like she’s seen better days. She must be ready to get this done and over with. How many auditions did she see, █████ wonders, and how many of them were accepted or have a higher rate of acceptance already?

“Well,” the woman’s voice is short, crisp, and she has a straight-to-the-point aura. “Let’s get started.”

█████ stares at the camera, and it stares back at her. The butterflies are screaming, the dragonflies, crying, and the moths are buzzing against her very existence.

* * *

She’s spilling.

She’s spilling, she’s slipping; she’s falling and falling and going down, farther and farther.

One moment, she’s being asked what she wants to do, and the next, her mouth opens and words she don’t even know she wanted to say come spilling out. Everything comes rushing at once; the black and white world, her black and white self, everything she’s ever thought about Danganronpa and more. Everything comes flooding out like the watercolor paint she only used once; everything is spilling and all the colors are pooling around her and she feels like drowning.

She thinks, it’s silly, how she can just open up this way to strangers in front of a camera, but she’s falling faster and faster and faster.

She talks about how the world is ugly and how the only color left is the bright pink of Danganronpa blood, she’s saying everything about her past and how she’d like to be happier again, and if they could, could make her like that. The memories of her childhood in the days that she felt truly happy come rushing to her, and that spills out, too. Happy, like the color yellow, and she asks if they could maybe take her black and white self devoid of color and paint it bright bright yellow like the sun so she could _live_ again.

At the end of it all, they ask her what talent she would want.

She thinks of the watercolor set, of the fingerprint-paintings still hung in the living room, likely a small layer of dust upon them.

“Artist,” she says. “I’d like to be the Ultimate Artist.”

* * *

It’s over too soon and too quickly and she’s sure that they’ll reject her. She’s made a fool of herself, she’s done everything wrong.

She gets a phone call that night, from the headquarters, saying that if she gets in they’ll let her know within the next week or so.

* * *

Time passes. It feels like forever. She hasn’t heard even a word yet from Team Danganronpa. She wants to curl up into a ball and disappear. Maybe she’ll call in sick for the first time in forever.

She muses about this, staring at her feet on the usual route she takes to home. They feel heavier than usual. Perhaps it's stress?

She notices a van ― was that always there? Maybe the driver is lost ― pull up before her, and she keeps walking her way.

And then people come rushing out, and she thinks, they look like they’re coming to _me,_ and then realizes that they are, in fact, rushing to her and she can only take one, two, three steps back before they reach her, before her mind processes anything beyond that.

She’s shoved into the van, and she notices in her panicking haze that they have Danganronpa pins on their shirts.

“Congratulations,” says one of the people who dragged her in, “You’ve been chosen for the 53rd season of Danganronpa!”

Those are the last words before she passes out.

(Her name is █████ ██████, and she ceases to exist that day.)

* * *

Her name is Angie Yonaga.

She wakes up in a locker.

**Author's Note:**

> i think the pacing is a tad wonky but regardless thank you for reading! i just. love angie a lot, and also wanted to use the idea of a crossed/boxed out name in a fic, so. here you are. i didn't expect to write this much but that's just how it be sometimes?????? yeah
> 
> as always, kudos/comments are very much appreciated! thank you again, i hope you enjoyed!!!! i hope you have a good day!!


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